|
Donny Garcia is a South Florida native, born in Miami in 1979. He is of Cuban-American descent. Having experienced both cultures first-hand, DG has come to understand the relationship between environment and identity. To DG, Miami provides a culturally rich environment that together with his Cuban upbringing has helped shape his personal identity. This notion of combining the surrounding elements to yield character and personal meaning has since been a prevalent theme in DG’s work.
DG received two types of education which have made him more aware and appreciative of the formal aspects of art: architecture and music. Through architecture, DG learned to exploit space and geometry, becoming proficient at rendering meaning through structure and form. Through music, DG came to comprehend the importance of arrangement in the production of sound and the conveyance of mood and emotion.
The focus of DG's work can be summarized in his own words “I am compulsive and my life requires structure and arrangement. But painting for me is a safe house that grants me the opposite freedom. There are however, evident signs of compulsiveness in my work.”
It is this intent to free himself from his instinctual fixation toward order and symmetry that makes DG’s work distinctive. As evidenced by his pieces, DG embraces disorder and asymmetry in order to achieve a natural balance between form and meaning—showing that the relationship is not always a neat one. In this way, DG’s work resembles his life and personality. Each work is a personal investment employing techniques, styles and materials that converge to yield a meaning unique to the composition but also reflective of the otherwise obscured artistic intention. DG's process of merger incorporates both conceptual and concrete components, be they environmental factors like music playing in the background, tactile impressions from playing instruments, perceptual impressions and their corresponding emotions, found materials such as ash and yarn, or exploitable materials such acrylic and spray paints.
For DG the central concern and focus goes beyond materials and impressions and is first and foremost the process by which a work comes to be created, allowing the work's message and sense to surface as a consequence of its inherent structure and design.
|
|
